You know how, when you’re in high school, one of the first little quiz "hacks" you learn is "CBDA"?
For those of you who a) didn’t go to high-school or b) are too old to remember this, CBDA is the frequency of the correct answers on any given multiple-choice quiz. In other words, when you have absolutely no idea what the correct answer is, and none of the options are particularly illuminating, "C" is the choice with the highest probability of being correct, followed by "B," followed by "D," and so on. This hack is pretty old, and most modern multiple-choice exams will be seeded in such a way as to defeat this. (If I’m not mistaken the classic CBDA theory stated that "C" would be the correct answer 40% of the time, "B" 30%, "D" 20% and "A" 10%. Yes, that means that answering all C’s will very likely result in failure.)
Anyway, I was reminded of this while trying some casual-hacking today on my friend’s online mid-term exam. We had determined how to retrieve the answers from the handler routine (more because of the naive lack of security, than due to our skills as hax0rs), and I was surprised to discover that the multiple-choice answers followed the CBDA theory almost exactly.
So I started thinking about other ways you could possibly cheat a multiple choice exam, and found this discussion via Google:
Other cool ways of cheating that have become legend or are passed down as "foolproof" methods.
- Thegood old cup of Coffee. Write the info on the cup, cover with a papersleeve, at the opportune time just slip the cover down.
- One guysupposedly wrote out his crib sheet in code, had it printed on thebacks of two shirts and paid the guys in front of him to wear them ontest day. He made up some random slogan on the front to explain thegibberish on the back, and to make it look like an orginization or clubshirt.
- Then there’s the girl who wore a remote vibrator to amultiple choice exam and was given the correct answers by a crude morsecode system.
Man, if you’re gonna go to all that trouble, maybe you should just study for the exam instead, know what I’m sayin’?